The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Monday, April 4, 2016, after justices ruled in a case involving the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote” and unanimously upheld a Texas law that counts everyone, not just eligible voters, in deciding how to draw legislative districts. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a Texas reapportionments law that increases the political clout of Hispanics was consistent with the strained interpretation of the Constitution that has dominated the court’s opinions on redistricting for over half a century. The unanimous decision, by a court split equally between liberals and conservatives, suggests that efforts to translate “one person, one vote” into “one citizen, one vote” aren’t likely to be successful in the near future.

Overlooked in the thinking of the justices was the situation that originally led the court, in 1964, to propose what was then called the “one man, one vote” rule in Reynolds v. Sims.

By the 1960s, archaic reapportionment laws in various states had created a situation in which the number of people living in legislative districts varied enormously. That was due to the traditional practice of apportioning seats in the upper house of a state legislature on the basis of one seat per county.

As urban populations grew and rural areas either lost residents or stayed at about the same number, a handful of voters in a farming county chose a single legislator while thousands of voters in a city also had only one representative.

The original meaning of “one man, one vote” was really “one citizen, one vote.” It was the disparity in population from district to district that caused the courts, from the district federal court to the Supreme Court, to insist on relatively equal numbers of people within the various legislative districts. The overwhelming number of the people in each district were citizens, with relatively few non-citizens at that time.

Over the years since Reynolds and its companion cases the demographic makeup of our California Assembly, Senate and congressional districts, has changed in most urban areas. Vast numbers of undocumented immigrants have flooded into major urban areas, both in the central cities and in certain suburbs. Today, drawing legislative boundaries that attempt to create districts with roughly the same population creates some districts with relatively few eligible voters. In the 2012 general election one largely Hispanic assembly district had less than half the voters that a largely Anglo district had.

Liberals have been at the forefront in the move to count non-citizens in determining the size of legislative districts. But liberals are not alone. The decision announced Monday found conservatives casting four of the eight votes to uphold the Texas reapportionment of the state senate that created numerous districts, largely populated by Hispanics, that have far fewer voters than the primarily white districts in the state. Two of the conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, wrote separate concurring opinions, but neither indicated any serious deviation from the official opinion, written by liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It may be that conservatives, with their heavy reliance on “original intent,” have painted themselves into a corner. The argument for districts equal in population rests heavily on the meaning that the authors of the Constitution and the Congress that implemented it placed on the constitutional clause that apportions seats in the House of Representatives.

That clause says clearly that seats in the House will be allocated on the basis of the total number of inhabitants of each state. That word “inhabitants” must, however, be read in light of the large slave population resident in the southern states, a fact that was on the minds of the founders, both southern and northern, at the convention.

That clause does not say anything about the size of state legislative districts or how state legislative districts will be apportioned. While the total population, including those here illegally, is to be counted for determining how many representatives each state will get, the Constitution is silent on apportionment of state or city legislative seats.

It is hard to comprehend why the justices believe that millions of inhabitants who are illegally in the country should be counted in determining the size of a legislative district. In so doing, they defeat the democratic concept of “one citizen, one vote.”

Ralph E. Shaffer is professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona. reshaffer@cpp.edu

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.